I’m a health professional, but sometimes a patient as well. And like most patients, I generally don’t want health decisions being made without my input. Yes, I want the best medical information, and the advice of medical professionals, but ultimately I want to make my own decisions about my care. That’s the norm in health care today, but relatively new in the history of medicine.

Medical paternalism, where patient preferences are secondary (or even ignored), is disappearing. Even informed consent, where patients are given information on risks and benefits, doesn’t adequately describe the drive towards a two-way exchange, with an empowered, engaged patient. Today the goal is shared decision making, which describes a mutual decision that is informed by a health professional’s medical knowledge and advice, but also incorporates a patient’s own preferences and wishes. Truly shared decision-making includes an explicit consideration of a treatment’s expected benefits and potential harms, yet reflects patient values.

Screening is a textbook example of why shared decision-making should be our goal. Given the benefits of a disease screening program may be modest, and not without harms, understanding and incorporating individual preference is essential. Some may value the small but incremental benefits of screening, and choose to be screened despite the risks of false positives, investigations, and possible overtreatment. Given the exact same circumstances, another individual may opt to forgo screening, making a different, yet equally acceptable decision. While there are some health interventions for which the benefits are unequivocal, and others for which the harms are just as clear, most health treatments (and interventions like screening) have both benefits and potential harms that must be carefully assessed within the context of patient preferences. Research published earlier this year has identified a significant barrier to truly effective shared decision-making and risk assessment: Across a wide range of interventions, we routinely overestimate the benefits of health treatments, and underestimate their risks. (more…)

Happy New Year to all our readers! Today marks the completion of 5 years of SBM and the beginning of year 6. My contributions, at one a week, have now reached a total of 260. My first post on this blog, 5 years ago, was a review of an important book about science and alternative medicine, Snake Oil Science. This year I’d like to start with an important book about communicating medical science to patients, Critical Decisions, by Peter A. Ubel, M.D.

I was wrong about informed consent. I thought informed consent was a matter of explaining the risks and benefits of treatments to patients so they could decide what they wanted to do. That was naïve, simplistic, and misguided. Ubel’s book has radically changed my thinking about how doctors should interact with patients.

Paternalism in medicine is dead. Patient autonomy rules. We respect the right of patients to determine their own treatments, even if their choices seem unwise to us. Patients should do what they want. But there’s a problem: patients may not know what they really want. Emotions and unconscious and irrational forces influence their medical decisions. Preferences can change from one moment to the next, and they can shift with subtle changes in how treatments are described and how the issues are framed. Doctors need to develop a better understanding of what is going on in their patients’ minds, of how the way they present treatment options can inadvertently influence patients, and of how they can participate with patients in a process of shared decision-making. It’s possible to provide direction without paternalism. (more…)